Is Your Data Ready to Help You Make Game-Changing Decisions?

The shift from information to intelligence requires an analytics foundation that can unleash the power of data

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Organizations are facing disruption on many fronts. But don’t fret: Disruption can be a good thing, if you use it to redefine your strategies and digitally transform your business to better prepare for the future.

Successful digital transformation requires a foundation of properly managed data. With the right data management and governance systems and processes in place, CIOs can begin to turn information into intelligence to help their businesses make better decisions by leveraging data that is reliable, up-to-date, and trustworthy.

How well do you effectively understand and manage your data? Proper data management supports data discovery, connectivity, quality, security, and governance across all systems and process. Putting this foundational component in place will build more trust in the data, which will in turn build confidence in any decisions, processes, and outcomes driven through that data.

Reliable data has always been important, but it's vitally important for organizations looking to unlock its potential as a driver of digital transformation. With high-quality, “clean” data, CIOs can begin to build an intelligent organization from top to bottom by providing trustworthy data, information, and knowledge for all aspects of the business.

An evolved approach to data management sets the stage for improvements across all areas of the business including finance, marketing and operations. In describing how proper data management has helped her company, Cynthia Nustad, EVP and Chief Strategy Officer for HMS, cites a few clear business benefits. “We’ve accelerated new product introduction, aligned data easier, and reduced the time to onboard customer data by more than 40%,” says Nustad, who previously served as CIO for HMS, which provides cost-containment solutions for federal and state governments, commercial insurers and other organizations in the healthcare industry.

In addition to the improvements that data quality can bring to your existing operations, good data will help you build new data analytics projects and platforms, and begin to incorporate machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) into your analytics toolkit. If you try to implement these types of projects without proper data quality and governance systems and processes, you’ll most likely be wasting time and money.

While it’s tempting for CIOs to jump headfirst into AI and other advanced big data initiatives, successful deployments first require a focus on data management. It isn’t the most exciting area, but having good data is an absolute requirement to building an intelligent organization.